When shopping for groceries or other items, who has not encountered a situation where one is asked to place an item on a checkout conveyor belt or other checkout system surface where you are not sure about what has been recently placed on that surface? Or, alternatively, one may be exposed to a particular situation where one has observed someone place a leaking item like a poultry product where the leak has smeared the surface and caused concerns about salmonella or other germs contaminating items later placed on the conveyor.
While checkout clerks are trained to actively to respond to such spills with products such as Windex™ and paper towels, even a small amount of unaddressed contamination may leave questions in a consumer's mind. Further, as self-checkout increases and demands on the time of checkout clerks increase, less time and opportunities may exist for appropriate prophylactic action to be taken.
Perhaps, as a consequence, various complex conveyor belt cleaning apparatuses have been described. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,225,915 and 6,971,503 which are incorporated by reference herein in their entirety. However, such arrangements are relatively complex, and if built into the conveyor and not seen by consumers may fail to ease the consumer's fears about germs and the like. Also, if built into a conveyor belt system, such an approach does not provide for ready retrofitting to an existing store system, nor would it have the flexibility of being moved from one checkout station to another as needed.